So I still want Google Reader back, and honestly mostly I have switched back to it along with Reeder on my iPad, but instead of staring items I am sending them to pinboard. And if I had to chose one of the other choices as of right now it would have to be newsblur, though I think it is slow and not nearly as efficient as Reader was.

And as for TheOldReader I can’t really say as I have only moved up to 4830 after what 5 days, so I figure my feeds will import in a couple of weeks and I can give it a go.

Netvibes interface is just not great for an iPad, which is where I mostly read feeds. Maybe with a dedicated app it would be better.

And Feedly I just don’t like the look of it, if they would also have a more reader like view maybe I could go for it. I do find it interesting that they say their user base grew by half a million in one day as of the announcement as that is a huge amount more than the 120,000 who have signed the petition to not kill Google Reader.

Lets hop that Diggs app is good.

Or if Reeder updates feeds itself, and syncs via iCloud as I do have Mac, iPad and iPhone versions. Will not be great for at work as I won’t have an app there, but I could always just use my ipad.

The Guardian UK has a great article on why killing Google Reader is like Killing the bees.

Basically RSS never caught on with the internet in general, and it isn’t an easy source of income, and google would of course rather have us use Google+, though it doesn’t work at all the same way.

The thing is the users of Google Reader are power users, and they still drive much more site traffic than Google+ does. And they are the journalists and power users and bloggers. And it is us that drives people to sites, and drives links on sites like Google+ and Facebook, so Google is effectively shooting themselves in the foot without any forward thinking.

I totally agree with the sentiment. It is the same kind of Hubris as Apple giving up on it’s power users without releasing a new MacPro in years! Power users may not themselves be a huge sales market, but they are in fact a huge driver of others users and the internet in general.

And to drive those users away from your services may not hurt in the short run, but it will hurt in the long run. Who of us will trust Google to keep it’s services around? Will Blogger be next? How about Gmail? Calendar? What service will Google drop next? And the more users that leave, the less money Google makes over advertising, and reading their data, and it will make them more irrelevant!

App Storm has an article on Google Reader going down and some alternatives that I have not heard anywhere else. A must read! I didn’t realize that Pinboard could import your starred pages from Google Reader! Very nice! And I have never even heard of the self hosted Fever! App Storm has an awesome review of it as well. Going to have to look into that!

So the Save Google Reader Petition at Change.org has reached 100,000 signatures! Lets see it make 150,000! And hope that Google is listening, though I doubt it!

So there are a bunch of alternatives to Google Reader out there, and I have been trying them out to see what I will transition to, when Google proves just how evil it is and shuts down Google Reader.

Personally I use reader in my Browser and the awesome REEDER on my iPhone and iPad. And he says REEDER won’t die with Google Reader.

Though I hope he announces what backend he will be supporting soon, as I don’t want to give up Reeder, and am still waiting for the REEDER 2 for iPad update (The REEDER update on iPhone is awesome, and the iPad app needs those features).

The first I have tried is Feedly, which is a browser extension and RSS reader which currently syncs with Google Reader, but they promise to move to their Normandy Back end as soon as Reader goes down.

Now Feedly is pretty, but more digital magazine than Google Reader like, which makes it not as efficient for me.

It does run well and look nice though.

Netvibes has a free and paid version. It can import you Google Reader feeds though. When you first look at your feeds it is in a strange widget view, but you can switch to a list view.

Widget View, which I don’t like.

List view is much more Google reader like, and you can also see more of the articles.

It is pretty nice and works OK on the iPad, but the buttons are small and you have to pull down menus to mark as read (I like the auto marking read as you scroll past in reader) and it feels a bit slow and just not as well laid out as reader. It does quickly let you see full pages and the like, but having to pull down drop down menus to tag to read for later or mark as read is just not very efficient.

Newsblur is a recent addition, and will import your reader rss feeds, though it has been really slow since the announcement of Google Readers demise. It has a free version with 60 feeds or is $12 a year for all your feeds to work.

It also has a free iPad app. So far I would say they are getting way too hammered, as the interface is so slow as to be unusable. I will keep trying, but hopefully their capacity will grow and they will start to function better.

The OldReader also has potential. They are based on an old version of Google Reader before they made so many changes, but currently the import functionality has been deprecated. I had to upload my old feeds (thankfully you can easily download yours from Google) and it said I am something like 6000 in line for them to be imported , so I don’t really have any feeds to play with.

It is similar to Reader and seems very fast so far (I only have 1 feed, which is theres though). They do promise a new API so apps can use them and will keep working to improve quickly.

I will keep trying, but so far no cloud solution is nearly as good as Reader. Maybe once servers get better things will improve, but right now I don’t see which direction I should move. Hmm. Will keep you updated.

Well the petition at Change.org only needs 749 to go, not that I think Google will listen, but it would be great if they would release their source code so someone else could take over. Be easy enough to make an add supported and a pay version, though it would need speed to work as well certainly.